Bookwyrm
by Aliathe
Summary: In which Hermione Granger is much less Muggleborn than first believed, and does indeed devour books. Quite literally. [creature!hermione] [drabble-series]
1. two dragons meet

**Summary:**

 _In which Hermione Granger is much less Muggleborn than first believed, and does indeed devour books. Quite literally. [creature!hermione] [drabble-series]_

 **Disclaimer:**

 _I don't own Harry Potter, or the cover picture._

* * *

"Oh, I was so nervous and excited when I got my Hogwarts letter!" the brunette with strangely bushy hair enthused, eyes a-glitter with reminisced glee.

Draco, standing somewhere behind her in the milling crowd of first-years, scoffed.

"Muggleborn, then?" he sneered, the derisiveness clear despite the 'polite' term. "They shouldn't even allow you lot into Hogwarts. Blood breeds true, and that goes doubly same for magical talent."

Instead of looking offended, or in anyway indignant, she turned around and stared deeply at him for one second, two seconds, three.

Then she smiled, baring teeth that suddenly looked slightly too-sharp under the flickering candlelights, and Draco couldn't help but notice how her eyes glittered even when hooded by shadow, how their pupils retracted instead of enlarged.

(Or was he wrong, and her pupils were always that thin, that narrow, that... _reptilian?_ )

"Blood breeding true is not something I'm afraid of," she shrugged simply, and turned back around, ducking around a few people to disappear within seconds.

When he tried to yell after her a threat, perhaps the good ol' handy, "my father will hear of this!", Draco Malfoy discovered he could not make words come out of his throat.

His voice returned after he was Sorted and sat down at his table, but by then he had long since lost his chance and desire to yell any threats after the Muggleborn he was not quite sure was entirely Muggleborn anymore.

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	2. curls or spines

**Summary:**

 _In which Hermione Granger is much less Muggleborn than first believed, and does indeed devour books. Quite literally. [creature!hermione] [drabble-series]_

 **Disclaimer:**

 _I don't own Harry Potter, or the cover picture._

* * *

Harry was observant, mostly out of necessity from growing up around three extremely volatile presences who could turn violent on him at the slightest provocation.

Also, nobody really paid attention to first-years.

Which, coupled with the fact that most people seemed preoccupied with trying to adjust to a school schedule, and thus, a school morning wake-up, meant that he was the only one to notice how one of the Gryffindor first-year girls was ignoring breakfast entirely.

Her entire being stayed stock-still with a very focused, honed sort of concentration, staring intently at the gigantic tome open in front of her, on top of her empty plate.

This was someone, he thought, who _embodied_ the phrase 'had only eyes for,' a phrase he realized he hadn't truly understood until today.

The speed at which she read was also truly insane; despite the long lines of tiny, scrawled, cramped text, and the pages as tall as probably her entire forearm, she would stare at one page for about five seconds, blink twice, rapidly, and then stare at the opposite page for about five seconds, before blinking rapidly twice again.

After her slim fingers quickly turned a page, almost _hungrily_ , she repeated the entire odd ritual.

Her sheer dedication made him hesitate greatly to interrupt her, but Ron wasn't down yet, and Neville, the only other person (excluding Malfoy) who he'd really spoken to on the train, seemed to be dozing face-down in his bowl of honeyed porridge.

So, reasoning rather nervously that, if nothing else, she was interesting, and perhaps they could talk about some of the books he sometimes read snippets of when hiding from Dudley in library nooks?

At his age, he hadn't had much contact with girls yet, but girls and boys also hadn't begun to distinguish themselves so strictly yet.

Therefore, Harry only felt the normal social anxiety and awkwardness of beginning a conversation with someone who looked thoroughly busy.

"Erm, good morning," he greeted, sliding his plate down the empty benches to settle down directly across from her. "What are you reading? It looks... absorbing."

Not looking up, she muttered a snappy, "Ogleford's Book of Deconstructed Fairy Tales. A bit dry and crunchy, but that nicely complements the slight bitterness and the overall sweet glaze. Not a bad choice for nutrition purposes, keeps the mind healthy."

"Uh, right."

Feeling even more out-of-his-depth, Harry tried for the typical exchange-of-names. "I'm Harry Potter."

She bobbed her head absently, not reacting to his supposedly famous name, still scanning the words like a pigeon searching for crumbs, a stray strand of shiny, thick, and considerably bristling hair.

"What's your name? And why aren't you eating breakfast? Won't you get hungry?" he finally blurted out, unbearably curious.

Finally, she glanced up, tucking the strand of hair behind her left ear, where an earring was briefly revealed in the sweep, something like a small chip of yellow-ish stone marked with black, shaped somewhat in the shape of a fish scale.

He couldn't see it anymore after her hair fell back in place, and hastily averted his gaze before she could catch him looking and think him even ruder than she must already, after his outburst.

"Hermione of the Grange, or just Hermione Granger, if you prefer that. I already ate breakfast. I won't get hungry; rest assured, I'll be eating plenty throughout the day," she said, fast and just as snappy, shaping the words like something precious, her amusement luckily shining through her overall indifferent tone.

For some reason, she also tapped a bony finger on the book pages before her when mentioning eating, like an ingrained habit.

And that was that, wasn't it?

Hermione's form, even drowned in the robes in which she somehow managed to make look moving more or less easy, was entirely bony.

Not starved-skeletal bony, but a sort of general, sharply-outlined joints, thinly-stretched skin boniness.

Her chin and cheekbones were sharply defined, just like everything else, pulling so that her eyes always looked to be widely alert, as if there just wasn't enough skin to spare on covering her flesh and bones as well, making her figure look slim, undeniably efficient, and unmistakably harsh instead of delicate.

Only her hair, in fact, in all it's russet-copper-wiry-tangled glory seemed to have any bluster or heartiness to it, bushing out in curls more suited to a particularly agitated cat, or, no-

Like relaxed spines just waiting and testing the air for a reason to stand up on end in a very offensive defence.

"You've been staring at my hair," Hermione interrupted, not-quite frowning but no longer wearing that small smile from reading. "Is something wrong?"

She placed her hands in her lap and stared at _him_ with the same intense concentration she had given to her book.

(In her lap, under the table, and unseen by all, Hermione's hands clenched at the same time that the ends of her nails lengthened to a spikier point.)

Harry, startled, hastily apologized.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to, um, stare, my imagination sometimes gets carried away with me."

Hermione still didn't relax her not-quite frowning.

He followed his intuition, and tacked on, "I thought your hair made you look somewhat like a cat."

That did the trick.

Her hands returned into visibility, folded neatly on top of her book, which she closed with finality.

"I've always rather liked cats," she said, her small (toothless) smile back. "Would you like to walk to class together, Harry Potter?"

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 **Reviews:**

 _Shout-out to CatchingSnowflakes, who made an account just to review this story within one. Also, to Loopy Leefy, for reviewing._


	3. wheres whats whos hows

**Summary:**

 _In which Hermione Granger is much less Muggleborn than first believed, and does indeed devour books. Quite literally. [creature!hermione] [drabble-series]_

 **Disclaimer:**

 _I don't own Harry Potter, or the cover picture._

* * *

Ronald Bilius Weasley rather despises his name, and for a good reason.

Because seriously, who the hell names their son with a middle name like 'Bilius'?

Sounded like 'bile,' or 'belligerent,' or a bunch of other words Percy kept tossing around whenever he's particularly aggrieved at something and deciding to take it out passive-aggressively on _him,_ since Charlie and Bill are both out-of-home and older, Fred and George will get back at him twice as aggressively and not nearly as passively, and Ginny...

It isn't that Ginny is the only girl and the youngest to boot, making her automatically the favorite of both parents.

Her 'aura' of off-limits is attributed more to her devious girl mind coming up with devious girl things, and, of course, how her first fit of accidental magic appeared suspiciously like the Bat-Bogey Hex.

... wait... 'aggrieved'?

 _'Attributed'?_

Oh, dear Merlin, Percy is rubbing off on him now.

Stupid stuck-up snot, and _whywhywhy_ did his mother have to be so _embarrassing,_ today of all days, cleaning his face in a public area?

Didn't she know _Harry Potter_ is coming to Hogwarts today?

The very same bus!

The very same year!

Most definitely the very same House, because Ron is fairly certain Gryffindor ran in the blood, and, according to the twins, if he got lucky they'd even be in the same train apartment.

Then again, while the twins _had_ reported to him, their heads stuck halfway out the windows, that they'd seen Harry Potter and had spoken to him as well, it remains entirely possible that they're lying.

He won't be the first to claim belief in everything they say, not after all the demo-pranks he suffered and _will suffer_ through as an unwilling 'volunteer' who lives conveniently within the same house.

Demo-pranks which Percy evades through shutting himself in his room, and Ginny through pouting at Mum before running off to spend the day with that younger friend of hers, some neighbor with a name like Crescent or Star or something distinctly hippy-ish, a term he's learned through osmosis with Dad's queer Muggle obsession.

'Osmosis' being another word he absorbs around the prissy prick-who-shall-not-be-named, always flouncing around with his better hand-me-downs and better grades and less lectures from the Very Cross Indeed Mum.

... ahem, _an-_ y-way...

All's he's thinking is, perhaps it's for the best to... y'know... make some of his own luck.

That in mind, Ron rubs the allegedly smudged nose once, huffily, then quickly ascends into and speed-walks down the long Hogwarts Express corridors, intently in search of a boy with the classic Potter hair, wild and jet-black.

He pays no mind to another family on the station, standing a few feet to the left and back of his own furiously waving (and furiously ignored) family.

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 _A three-person family, two females one male, with identical heads of insanely untamed curls, in all the shades of brown there were, pale-skinned and straight-backed, clasping each other's forearms briefly with wickedly-honed fingernails, even the male._

 _They were dressed nicely in good-quality civilian clothes, but rather drably unremarkable, as if carefully so._

 _Backs to a column, angled to be mostly shrouded by cool dimness, and not of stunning height or notable classical beauty, they were a family easily dismissed, so long as you weren't close enough to feel the oddly... focused air around them, or close enough to see the strange way light glinted off their eyes (amber, or comparable to, with thinner pupils than the norm), their bones (strained to be stretched over with skin, and sharp like everything about them, that being 'sharp enough you'll cut yourself if you leaned in more than enough'), and their matching earrings (scale, tough and curiously patterned, all edges like knives)._

 _Well, light didn't glint off their earrings, but that was only because their earrings were buried among the thick quantities of brunette curls._

 _Those curls..._

 _They were something you couldn't really envision until you saw them yourself, and indeed, once you saw them, you'd forget completely the features of the face underneath, so demandingly attention-catching they were._

 _Wiry, bristling, constantly shifting to a constant minute movement, soft despite their harshness, and truly thick, enough to drown and suffocate in._

 _It lent a certain degree of fierceness, however, once you looked past the carefully drably unremarkable niceness of the family._

 _Once you looked past and saw what no amount of attempted averageness could smother._

 _"Behave yourself," said what was probably the mother, unsmiling._

 _"Learn lots," said what was probably the father, unsmiling._

 _"I will," said what was probably the daughter, unsmiling._

 _"Love you."_

 _The family of three, made up of 'whats' and not 'whos' but nevertheless firmly a family, regarded one another for precisely twenty-point-three-hundred-eighty-five seconds, then smiled toothlessly and nodded in synchronized, fluent unison._

 _And what was probably Hermione Granger and certainly Hermione of the Grange turned away to stalk fluidly onto the scarlet steam engine, two bags of luggage carried easily with each deceptively barely-not-skeletal arm._

 _For a flicker of a blink, the brush and contortion of her changing shadow's proportions made it almost look like she had sprouted another curl of inkyness that could charitably be called a tail._

 _Almost._

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 **Reviews:**

 _Shout-outs to .fisher, slytherinshadowhunter67, Forgottenlogin, einargs, Loopy Leefy, Ima. T, Guest, CatchingSnowflakes, and Lilvipar._


	4. thin veneer of humanity

**Summary:**

 _In which Hermione Granger is much less Muggleborn than first believed, and does indeed devour books. Quite literally. [creature!hermione] [drabble-series]_

 **Disclaimer:**

 _I don't own Harry Potter, or the cover picture._

* * *

She can feel the sluggish beating of her uncomfortable small heart, and the scales and claws and teeth and _words_ straining to burst out of her overall uncomfortably small shell of fragile humanity, _wordswordswords **ohscribethewords**._

She can feel them, every millisecond of every second of **every minute** of _every half-hour_ _of every hour of every half-day of every day of every weeklunary-cyclemonthhalf-yearyearsolar-cycle **life**._

It's... aggravating, then irritating, then ticklish and itchy by annoyingly undecided turns, like a group of squabbling hatchlings trying to invent a game without knowing how to play it.

It ebbs and fades and spikes without warning or her consent, which only makes her even more aggravated.

But Hermione isn't a hatchling.

She knows restraint, and knows _whenwherehowwhy_ to exercise it.

Besides, her heart beats faster and the _things_ prickling like crawlers under her skin move slower when she reads, when she _eats_ , and Hermione has never said no to a good piece of literature.

Admittedly, she's never said no to a bad piece of literature, neither, but it's not like she has much of a choice picking what she eats when she can eat by an accidental glance or overheard conversation.

Anyway, if burying herself in the library, which is the primary lure for her attendance at Hogwarts in the first place, will help her not break out (breakdown) and snap (snarl) at the closest example of the species she's wearing, then that's more than alright.

Hermione gets enough 'socialization' in with that amusingly persistent glasses-boy and that amusingly prejudiced chess-boy, anyway.

(Extra downside of mingling with the natives: just hearing their foul and grammatically incorrect remarks are enough to put her in a near-constant foul mood as well, which, coupled with the strain of keeping her shell intact, makes her less than patient company in crowds, defined as 'three-minus-her.'

She can keep the veneer of cordiality on for far longer, of course, but politeness is far different from patience or pleasantness, as anyone who has ever spent more than an hour within the fortress of Slytherin can attest to.)

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So long as they don't bring along that Seer.

Because she's sure the Seer may have a very nice personality and very nice intentions, but...

Seers and her kind have never gotten along, not when their words of gibberish are nauseating to the taste, either dizzying with their self-creation, or causing drunkenness on their Truth.

If Hermione wants to be near Luna, she'll go to the library and check out a book on Latin nature poems.

Until then, she'll just prod the glasses-boy in that direction, and savor the taste of awkward but heartfelt sweetness.

Since naturally Hermione reads over and advises all literary pieces crafted by her associates, even clumsy unsure stammering drafts of red-faced confessions tucked into journals.

It's good knowing glasses-boy and chess-boy have followed her suggestions of daily journals, however, though she doubts that they know she reads all of them.

Silly associates.

Hermione knows _all_ about those she claims as associates.

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	5. a propensity for unoriginal names

**Summary:**

 _In which Hermione Granger is much less Muggleborn than first believed, and does indeed devour books. Quite literally. [creature!hermione] [drabble-series]_

 **Disclaimer:**

 _I don't own Harry Potter, or the cover picture._

* * *

It's always amusing to see how each first-year class reacts to the 'absence' of a teacher, and the replacement of a cat.

It's not as amusing to see how a first-year very carefully _doesn't_ react, instead walking through that door with a walk that was merely a thinly-veiled stalk, turning those too-wide eyes with those too-thin pupils onto her, and, other than a meaningfully amused upwards quirk of her lips, turning reactionlessly back away to take a seat.

And isn't this interesting?

Minerva leans back, slightly, involuntarily twitching her whiskers with unease when the Boy Savior himself sits next to the girl who's only human in appearance, and begins a light, stilted, awkward conversation with her, but still _a conversation with her_ , as if he didn't know how inhuman she was.

Probably he didn't, actually; Albus had always had a bit of a soft heart for those with a cause and a burden, even if that cause was unneeded and that burden was something they were quite capable of carrying.

Half-giants, werewolves, part-veela, even a very helpless and uncertain fraction-vampire... Hogwarts had accepted them all, hid them all, covered for them all.

But those were all mixed-breeds, not genuinely dangerous creatures; even the werewolf was human most of the time.

Minerva thought herself to be a rather liberal witch, in most respects, with an attitude more open than 99% of the Ministry and probably at least half of Wizarding Britain, but when it came down to accepting a _draconic creature who could transform and kill students with a snap of their snout_ , liberalness didn't really matter much.

There had to be a line drawn _somewhere._

Granted, like Albus had reiterated with stern emphasis to the gathered faculty during the traditional before-school meeting, Hermione was simply a juvenile for her species, and could be subdued easily by such professionally trained good folk like themselves, yes?

 _"So long as we get to her before she snaps out a round of that silencing roar or whatever it is that they do," Snape had muttered dourly, with many of the staff hesitantly (or not so hesitantly) agreeing with him for once._

 _Even Minerva had nodded, loathe though she was to agree with that smug bastard who kept rubbing Slytherins' House Cup victories in her face._

 _"Now, now, Severus, and the rest of you, I'm really quite shocked and disappointed at your unwelcoming attitude so far," Albus sighed in return, pinching the bridge of his nose and shaking his head slowly and rhythmically, like some old antique Muggle grandfather clock._

 _She knew him well enough to recognize a ploy for pity when she saw one, but she had to admit his act was a convincing one, and perhaps, just perhaps, part of that age-old weariness wasn't actually an act._

 _'Shocker if I ever heard one, then, of Albus Dumbledore not putting on a fine show for those always watching.'_

 _"Bookwyrms, as wizarding kind has unoriginally named them, are a rare and amiable if private breed, judging by the few past recorded interactions. Intelligence on par or greater than your average wizard, constantly 'eating' the intent and meaning of words around them, thus constantly gaining knowledge to add to their encyclopedic mental libraries. They hoard works of literature, as you know, or rather, simply words in general, and can divine much about a person and their purpose just from 'eating' their words. Quite impressively long-lived, if we are to believe they die like they say they do, an assortment of unknown powers, a pacifist culture tempered by norms where battle is done through wits and mere words when provoked . . . And, when fully mature, large enough and similar enough to contend for the title of a 'dragon' by those unfortunately less educated. Can't you see what a golden opportunity we have been handed here?"_

 _Here, he grew quiet and distant._

 _Surely another act, but one of his more impressively emotional ones to date._

 _"We all know the Dark Lord . . . no, we all know that Voldemort has not been so easily defeated. He will be back. And if you do not believe me," Albus added pointedly, a sliver of his hidden steel spine sliding into his speech, perfectly cutting off the sudden rise of protests, "then think on this. The next time a Dark Lord rises, for as definite as human nature can get, humanity will produce another Dark Lord, would you rather face them with a race of word-centered veritable dragons, or without a race of word-centered veritable dragons? Or even, worst coming to worst, and they are somehow bribed or coerced or otherwise swayed from 'reacting' to 'attacking,' facing a Dark Lord with a race of word-centered veritable dragons on their side?"_

 _Having half-rosen from his seat somewhere in his passioned, deadly quiet speech, the Headmaster dropped back into it, and kneaded the bridge of his nose more thoroughly, as if warding off a headache._

 _"Words are very important. We communicate with them, we cast spells with them. Do you really want a race of sentient, possibly dangerous, magical beings running around with that sort of power to maybe take away words? They have no ties, no obligations to us other than as a food source-"_

 _He made another sharp gesture to quell the agitated murmurings._

 _"-of words, thank you very much. We have established that much, at least, when what we know as the Grange-dwelling Bookwyrm tribe contacted us about a young wyrmling who wished to explore our library and lessons. They are about as likely to eat a human as a human is likely to eat a bug; in other words, some tribes might consider them perfectly viable, following the philosophy of 'the source of words,' but the European-nesting Bookwyrms are largely in agreement that we're too, and I quote, 'squishy and warm and messy. We will take the crisp and clean words that you produce, perhaps, but no more, although certainly we are capable of sustaining ourselves on magic and such foods as fruit and vegetables and meat and grain.'_

 _"This Hermione Granger is their first hatchling in over half-a-century; they have also remained tight-lipped about their rate of reproduction, or methods of such, which only adds to the mystery surrounding their species as a whole. The Wizarding World probably knows more about Nundus than we do about Bookwyrms. We don't even know what they call themselves. As your Headmaster, I implore you, keep an eye on her, if not to protect her, than to at least protect the students while knowing the possible repercussions if we betray this trust they've given us. The Grange Bookwyrms were kind enough to leave me with another one of their sayings. 'The elephant may never forget, but we live longer and have much sharper teeth.' I consider that sound advice. Don't you?"_

And with that last, grim echo of a memory in her mind, Minerva McGonagall jumped off her desk as a cat, landed as a woman, and locked eyes with the monster smiling blandly at her without showing any teeth.

 _'What kind of teeth would you show, anyway, in that mouth of yours?'_

The smile grew progressively blander with every passing second, with every concerned nudge from Harry Potter next to her, as if very much aware of what she was thinking.

 _'Can they pluck words from our heads, as well? That is, I suppose, what we're supposed to find out.'_

Not removing her gaze, she began the class.

Never let it be said that Minerva McGonagall ever ran away from a challenge so publically bared.

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 **Reviews:**

 _Shout-outs to turtlehoffmann2251, and Lyanah._


	6. collision with a rock wall, by a duck

**Summary:**

 _In which Hermione Granger is much less Muggleborn than first believed, and does indeed devour books. Quite literally. [creature!hermione] [drabble-series]_

 **Disclaimer:**

 _I don't own Harry Potter, or the cover picture._

* * *

Watching Viktor Krum, stoic and stolid and utterly stone-faced foreign Quidditch star, trying to court Hermione Granger, self-assured and severe and utterly secretive focused top student, was equivalent to watching a duck slam headfirst into a rock wall.

Repeatedly.

That is to say, mystifying, awkward through secondhand embarrassment, and fascinating in it's unacknowledged futility.

The logic of such an action is, on one hand, not completely nonexistent.

Hermione is smart; clever, really, with enough long-term awareness and encyclopedic information to be wise, as well, insofar as a mere _child_ , really, can be 'wise'.

She doesn't entirely lack the physical appeal that is beginning to bloom from the other girls of her general age range, neither, brought out by the awkward transitioning period of adolescence bemoaned by so many.

If one preferred slim, straight figures, anyway, and didn't mind the obvious near-skeletal and sheer _sharpness_ that enveloped her, nor the omnipresent feeling of _apathy_ on an undeniably predatory level.

Her distance and self-imposed separation from the rest of the milling crowds could be, with a bit of carefully liberal, creative license, construed to be 'mysterious,' something often sagely noted to be an element that never failed to appear in the latest popular romance novel.

On the other hand, she is _Hermione Granger_.

Ron and Harry share silently screaming glances at the Bulgarian wizard's latest tentative overture: a flower formed from the folded pages of a book, the ink faded and faint.

Their friend (whose _only_ friends seemed to be them, actually), smiles (at the flower, not at Krum), and accepts it.

"It looks delicious," she comments, then lays it on top of the stack of library books at the table they are sharing, while they studied together for Ancient Runes, an effort proposed by the hopeful Krum to interest her academic side.

(A side which often appears to be her _only_ side.)

Belatedly, she adds, "thank you," before pointing out an incorrectly cited source on his incompleted essay.

Krum blinks, somewhat dazedly, and then quickly scrambles to to fix it.

H is rewarded by an approving, absent-minded nod, Hermione's attention long-since diverted once more to her own composition.

Harry and Ron share another glance, more despairing this time, from where they are spying on the duo from behind a bookcase.

(And, of course, under the ever-so-handy invisibility cloak.)

They aren't quite sure who (or what) they are despairing of (or _for_ ), only that they're definitely despairing with good reason.

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End file.
